Bar mitzvah inspires a gift of school supplies to Haitian orphanage

from the Toronto Star:

A Toronto teen plans to spend the first few days of the New Year with his father in Haiti, distributing school supplies to students at an orphanage southeast of Port-au-Prince, which was just 12 kilometres from the epicentre of the 2010 earthquake.

The trip will culminate his efforts to do something “meaningful” in honour of his bar mitzvah.

Josh Arbess, a 13-year-old at Leo Baeck Day School, raised almost $25,000 by asking everyone who attended his bar mitzvah earlier this year to make a donation to Ve’ahavta — the Canadian Jewish Humanitarian and Relief Project.

The idea was to use a portion of the money to buy 1,000 Kinder Kits —backpacks with school supplies — to be shipped and distributed at the House of Hope orphanage at the beginning of Janaury. .............(more)